„Four Changes“ 1970

II. POLLUTION

Pollution is of two types. One sort results from an excess of some fairly ordinary substance -- smoke, or solid waste -- which cannot be absorbed or transmuted rapidly enough to offset its introduction into the environment, thus causing changes the great cycle is not prepared for. (All organisms have wastes and by-products, and these are indeed part of the total biosphere: energy is passed along the line and refracted in various ways. This is cycling, not pollution.) The other sort is powerful modern chemicals and poisons, products of recent technology, which the biosphere is totally unprepared for. Such is DDT and similar chlorinated hydrocarbons -- nuclear testing fallout and nuclear waste -- poison gas, germ and virus storage and leakage by the military; and chemicals which are put into food, whose long-range effects on human beings have not been properly tested. 

The human race in the last century has allowed its production and scattering of wastes, by-produ…